Generally speaking, large facilities may employ, harbor, and/or shelter significant numbers of personnel. Be they employees, contractors, registered visitors, identified customers, patients, guests, inmates, or others, the various personnel may number from dozens, to hundreds or more. Even well trained, highly motivated, educated, dedicated, and vigilant security forces, with sophisticated automated security systems in place, may have their capabilities taxed or challenged to identify all of the personnel present in large facilities.
Moreover, general personnel (e.g., detailed to pursuits and endeavors other than security, per se), even with sound memories and heightened levels of general vigilance, cannot be expected to know everyone around them in such facilities, at least beyond more or less familiar colleagues and/or other personnel with whom they may have frequent or typical contact. These challenges may be exacerbated in facilities with high personnel turnover, churn, and/or task related location changing throughput.
Identification (ID) badges may help in these regards, as they may typically present a visible representation of a person's likeness and associated identity related data. However, typical ID badges are unable to show recent changes to an employee's appearance, or indicate if a security credential corresponding to the person may be exceeded, for example, in relation to authority to access various locations within the facility. In this context, the ID badges perform a static function of passively showing an unchanging (and indeed, unchangeable with respect to real time) likeness of how a person appeared when the badge was made.
Large facilities with high personnel populations may also be associated with significant amount of message traffic. The message traffic may relate to notifications, alerts, pages, and other messages. The messages may be directed to a particular person, or to a small group of persons, relative to the personnel population at large. Some of the messages, such as alarms, may also relate to situations of particular interest to security personnel and in many cases, may be more advantageously directed with a degree of exclusivity to security related personnel.
Message traffic in large facilities, however, may be broadcast generally over an array of loudspeakers. Presented at high (and in some situations and locations disturbing) acoustic volumes, the broadcast messages add to an overall volume of ambient sound within large facilities, which may already comprise a significant volume. The increased ambient sound level may simply be ignored, or “tuned-out” by personnel present therein.
Ignoring the message traffic, however, may cause relevant messages to be missed by personnel to whom it may be directed, and missing messages with urgent and/or important content may have costs and consequences. Moreover, the increased ambient sound level, especially at disturbingly high levels of acoustic volume and frequency of occurrence, may be disruptive in relation to the focus and concentration of the attention of personnel on whatever tasks may be at hand, with concomitant negative effects on productivity, efficiency, attention to detail, precision, accuracy, and/or quality.
It could be useful, therefore, to provide accurate, up to date information relating to identifying a person using an ID badge. It could also be useful for the identification information to relate to security information relevant throughout a large facility and all of the locations disposed therein. It could be useful, further, to provide timely information relevant to a particular person, among a large population of other persons, and including messages directed to that particular person, without adding to the volume of ambient noise within a facility, and/or drawing attention from other personnel to whom the message does not relate.